East of the Sun, West of the Moon
by Skeiler Stark
Summary: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell have an adventure east of the sun and west of the moon. Set after the end of the novel. Written for redshoeson in the Yuletide 2007 Challenge.


Jonathan Strange had been forced early on to acknowledge that life with Mr Norrell was not as exciting as it should have been after they went out of England and into Somewhere Else. Mr Norrell continued to be fussy, and his fussiness was exasperated by the lack of servants. It was Jonathan's opinion that in one especially dark moment of delicacy early on, Mr Norrell had even contemplated summoning a fairy spirit.

Jonathan had expected that going out of England, as magicians sometimes did, would land them in a world inverted—with a red-orange sky and everything in charcoal-drawing tones. Instead, he and Mr Norrell found themselves in a darkness-soaked land rather akin to what Rome must be like, a world populated by ruins and the evidence of once-immense power. The King was in every stone that had fallen, and on many of them, too—a bodily presence that emerged from the quiet rock to demand respect. Mr Norrell did not like living in the King's shadow—it made him anxious.

In this world outside of England, trapped in the darkness, time had become irrelevant. Inside the transported Hurtfew Abbey they made do—living the ascetic life of magicians of the Aureate age, practicing magic and occasionally remembering to care for their bodies. Mr Norrell remembered his body far more than Jonathsn was wont to.

It happened one day—or perhaps it was night, not that it mattered in the Darkness—that Jonathan was standing out among the ruins of the Other Place when he heard a shout. He looked in that direction through the lightlessness and, seeing nothing, headed off to investigate. He found a beautiful young woman sitting in the dirt, squinting at him.

"Who are you?" Jonathan asked.

"Who are you?" she replied.

"Jonathan Strange," he said.

"Oh," said the girl. "I was heading for the castle east of the sun and west of the moon." She gestured off to the right.

"Castle?" Strange was confused.

"Yes, there is a prince living there who I should have had," said the girl. "Only his stepmother is trying to make him marry a princess with a nose three yards long."

"Is this place east of the sun and west of the moon? " Jonathan asked. The girl nodded. "How did you get here?"

"The north wind brought me," the girl replied. "How did you get here?"

"I am a magician," Strange replied.

The girl thought about this, and decided that in some way it explained how she had walked into a column of night in the middle of the day. Jonathan invited the girl for a cup of tea. Over biscuits, the girl whom the north wind had brought told Strange and Norrell her story:

She was the youngest daughter of a poor peasant. One Thursday evening a white bear had come and given three taps on their dining room window. He had asked for the peasant's youngest daughter, and in exchange he would make the peasant as rich as he had been poor. The girl had, at first, not wanted to go along with the beat, but in the end had decided that she should so that her family could be wealthy.

The girl had ridden off on the bear's back and lived in a castle full of everything she could desire. She stayed there on condition that she never see the bear at night. Naturally, as generally happened in such situations, she had taken some bad advice and the bear—who was really a prince—had vanished east of the sun and west of the moon, all at the doing of his stepmother.

Mr Norrell considered, and said that it sounded very much like fairy magic.

"What can you do to win him back?" Strange asked.

"I don't know," said the girl. "I know no magic."

Strange and Norrell looked at each other. "I think we can help."

"Oh, really," Mr Norrell said fussily.

It took a good deal of persuading, but in the end Mr Norrell agreed to come along and see what he could do. They set off and after walking about half a day they found themselved in an elaborate Rococo garden surrounding a dilapidated castle. Strange and Norrell hung back while the girl approached the windows. Inside, they could see candle flickering on in the confusion that followed the sudden descent of night. The girl had disappeared from sight. The two magicians stood around and waited, Mr Norrell all the while complaining about the chill and fretting about the fact that they had such near neighbours. Strange was delighted, until he remembered that the curious properties of the darkness would prevent him ever wandering off on his own to have a private conversation with one of their fairy neighbours.

The girl reappeared, carrying a shirt. "Tomorrow is their wedding," she said, "but before the ceremony he is going to ask to see what his wife is good for, and marry only the woman that can get this shirt clean."

"The shirt is clean," Mr Norrell pointed out.

The girl looked slightly disgustedly at Mr Norrell, and Jonathan rushed to come to the point of the shirt. "What can we do?"

"I was wondering if you could put a spell on this so that no one can wash it, and then make it clean when I go to try."

Strange and Norrell agreed. They took the shirt and sat on a bench in the garden. "Perhaps Schott's Spell To Keep Everything Just As It Is?" Strange suggested.

"No, no, far too naive and romantic," Norrell said dismissively. "Best to use Cuthbert's Spell of Unchanging and Fitzmaurice's rather fanciful spell of undoing along with a powerful spell of binding to make sure no one but the girl can undo it."

Strange took a tallow from the girl and let three drops of wax fall onto it. Mr Norrell did the magic and no amount of picking in the world could get the wax to budge. The two magicians departed for home, promising that no matter how dirty the shirt got, it would come clean as soon as the girl touched it.

The next day, the prince asked his future wife to clean the shirt for him to wear to the wedding, and declared that he would marry no one but the woman who could wash it. All the fairies attempted to get the shirt clean on the princess with the three yards long nose's behalf but, as usually happens in these stories, none of them could do it. Finally there was no one left to try but the girl whom the north wind had brought, and, of course, as soon as she dipped it in the water it was as white as driven snow, and whiter still.

"Yes," said the prince, "this is the girl for me."


End file.
